C1

Early in the morning in Qinghe Town. There were no pedestrians on the road. Those carrying their responsibilities and selling breakfast were already waiting by the side of the road at the crossroad. It was already late autumn. The man who carried the load and sold the pancakes was indeed still wearing a thin long robe. His blue robe was washed until it was somewhat white. His entire body was covered with patches. There was an eight or nine year old boy next to him, who was helping him. He pulled out some dough from the dough that he had just woken up from and kneaded it into dough doses. The man rolled the dough doses and sprinkled some salt and seasoning as well as some chopped onions. "With a snap, he rolled up the dough again and again. A piece of cake was ready. He casually threw it into the stove and started roasting it against the wall of the stove. His movements were smooth and smooth. In a short while, a pile of baked cakes was piled up in front of him. At this time, no one came to buy breakfast. The man and the boy temporarily stopped what they were doing, and the man used the handkerchief on his waist to wipe his hands. He asked the boy beside him, "Mu Sheng, are you hungry?"

The boy nodded and stretched his body in front of the stove. Because there were no customers, the stove was the smallest. The frying pan on top of the stove was filled with freshly baked sesame cakes. This way, the sesame cakes would not quickly cool down. The boy's clothes were even more comical. It was obvious that he had changed them from adults' clothes. The wide clothes on his thin body made him look like a wolf. The clothes were also covered with patches, so it was impossible to tell the color of the cloth. A pair of straw shoes was still on his feet. His exposed skin was exposed in the cold late autumn. The air that could not withstand the cold had already turned red from the cold.

The man did not take one out of the prepared sesame seed cake for breakfast. Instead, he took out a black and hard round cake from his pocket and placed it in the stove to heat it up. He poured the water that had been boiled beforehand into two cups before dividing the hot black cake into two halves. He took one piece and gave one to the boy to eat. The black pancake was obviously made with wheat bran mixed in. It was very difficult to chew. Usually, one bite of the cake could only be swallowed with a mouthful of water. However, the boy and the man did not frown because it was difficult to swallow. Instead, they looked like they were eating very well.

"Uncle, someone is coming. " The boy called Mu Sheng was eating his pancakes when he suddenly saw a man in black walking out of the alley towards the breakfast stall.

"Wah, the tofu pudding is so hot. . . " "There are a lot of stuffing in wonton and wonton skin. "

His uncle also stopped eating the pancakes and shouted, "Sesame cake, big sesame cake, five wens per cake. "

As soon as the burly man walked out of the alley, he was drowned by the shouts from the breakfast stall. The big man turned a deaf ear to these shouts and walked straight to the stall. He took out ten copper coins and handed them over. "Give me four cakes, two for me, and pour me a cup of water. "

His uncle swiftly handed two pancakes to the burly man. Mu Sheng also brought the warm water over to the burly man. The big man ate the pancakes and drank the water as he swiftly stuffed the other two cakes his uncle wrapped in oil-paper into the bag he carried with him. When he put the two pancakes into his bag, he also finished one after drinking the water. The big man put down the cup of water. After thanking him, he grabbed the other pancake and left in a hurry.

Mu Sheng put away the cup of water and was about to wash it. He suddenly realized that a book had fallen from where the big man had been standing. It must have fallen from his bag when the big man had placed the cake. Mu Sheng picked up the book from the ground and looked towards where the man had gone. However, there was no trace of the big man. The road in Qinghe Town was complicated. There were many forks in the road. The man turned more and more and there was nowhere to find him.

Mu Sheng looked at the book. It was an old book with a black and yellow color. However, the paper was very good. It looked tough. Even so, it could not withstand the devastation of time. The pages were still rolled up. Mu Sheng casually flipped through the book. However, he could not help but be interested in this book. There were some small characters drawn on the book. It had never been in the book he had read before.

"Uncle, it's the book dropped by that uncle. "

"You can put it under the burden first, maybe that person will find you"

Mu Sheng was the child of a poor family in Qinghe Town. His mother died during labor when she gave birth to his brother. But his brother was born. After his mother died, the family was not well-off. It became even more difficult in an instant. When his mother was still alive, she could still rely on the craftsmanship of Nü Hong to subsidize some change to the family. But after his mother left, Mu Sheng's elder sister, Mu Liang, and Mu Sheng's younger brother, Mu Xian, the three children's food and drinks were all placed on his father's head. Although his elder sister, Mu Liang, could also help with some housework, After all, she was only an eight or nine year old girl at that time, and it would not be of much use to the family. His father said that he was going to earn money outside. Once he left, there was no news of him, which made his grandfather so angry that he fell ill.

Mu Sheng's grandfather had taken the Elementary Scholar exam when he was young, and he wanted to achieve better results. He had no intention of marrying, and had only focused on the Sage Book, in order to obtain merit in the capital. He had sold the few acres of farmland passed down by his ancestors, and had failed three times in a row. Finally, he gave up on this idea and married a wife to teach in town. Because they got married late, it was also late to ask for children. When his son was five years old, his wife died of illness. Mu Sheng's father could be considered his son, and he only had one son. He didn't want to let Mu Sheng suffer, so he placed his young dream on his son. He hoped that his son could get a meritorious service, but his son was just like him. He only got a scholar's degree. He didn't know anything other than reading and writing. He was also extremely lazy. He would never do physical work like farming and growing vegetables. This was even worse than him. Helpless, Old Man Mu had no choice but to resign from his private school job and retire in advance for his son to replace him. He had reclaimed some land and planted some fruits and vegetables for the family to eat. He also wrote some couplets for other people's weddings and weddings to earn some pocket money. Mu Sheng's father did not even greet him this time. He suddenly quit his job and ran away. How could he not anger the old man half to death? The old man was also old. It was no longer suitable for teaching, not to mention that there was only one private school in the entire town. The old man had no face to go after what had happened.

Once Mu Sheng's father left, the whole family fell into a predicament. It was inconvenient for the elder sister, Mu Liang, to appear in public. Besides, there were also many family matters at home. She needed to handle it, and her brother needed someone to take care of him when he was young. However, with just the few portions of the paddy planted by her grandfather and the sporadic income from selling the words, it was impossible to maintain the family expenses. Mu Sheng's uncle's family was also very poor. His family was a town's resident who did not have land. It was just that there were some vegetable gardens opened up in front of the house and behind the house. His uncle's family also had three children. They were younger than Mu Sheng, and their aunt was very diligent. However, Nü Hong's craftsmanship was not as good as Mu Sheng's mother's. She could only rely on the textile cloth to subsidize some household utensils. But how many people in Qinghe Town would come to buy? Mu Sheng's uncle barely managed to maintain his family's livelihood with the craftsmanship of making sesame cakes. But Mu Sheng's family had no choice but to help him in this situation, so his uncle asked Mu Sheng to learn how to make sesame cakes with him. He did not care about his meals for two meals a day.

When it came to Mu Sheng's generation, his grandfather did not force him to take the exam to get any achievements. Furthermore, for the sake of his family's livelihood, all the books that could be sold at home had already been sold out. Only the book Jolin, which was the elementary book for children to learn how to read had not been sold, so Mu Sheng had only read very few books. He had never seen a book with pictures like this before.

A month had passed, but he had never seen a man who had lost a book come back to look for it. However, Mu Sheng and the others were afraid that the man would come back to look for the lost book, so they took the book with them to the cookhouse every day. They carried the burden and followed them everywhere. Mu Sheng had already carefully flipped through the book. The words that he did not understand even specifically consulted his grandfather. Although his grandfather knew every word in the book, he did not know the meaning of the combination. Mu Sheng listened to his grandfather's deduction. This book that the burly man lost might be a book for practicing martial arts. However, Mu Sheng looked at the text and compared it with the picture. No matter how he looked at it, it did not look like a martial arts book. The tiny figures drawn in the book didn't have any attack moves. They were drawn and written about how to twist one's body into a strange shape. For example, the head piercing through the middle of one's leg to the back, the body shrinking into a ball, and so on and so forth. And when doing these movements, it also had to be in a specific breathing posture. It was called inducing breathing. There was an exaggerated name in this strange book called Deathless Dao Arts. On the first page of the book, there was a gatha written in large cinnabar.

"There is no door to the great path, but there is a path to it. If you can get into this book, you will be the only one in the universe. "